American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century by Kevin Phillips.
This is the third in Phillips’ trilogy on the Bush dynasty and the damage it has wrought on America and the world, the other titles being American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy. Politically, Phillips is a conservative Republican, but one not deceived by the Bush façade.
Phillips is an insightful observer of the American political scene, as well as someone who believes in the running the numbers, both politically and economically. His work is chock full of clear thinking founded on reality based research. It is not surprise that he despises what GW Bush has done to our country.
Rather than write a comprehensive review of this book, I would like to look at it in terms of context and the related concept of rules sets. Context I will define as the matrix of beliefs that we use to make sense of the world around us. Rules sets are a collection of rules (both formal and informal) that delineates how some activity normally unfolds.
Much of the original support of GW Bush was based on people who thought that he shared their context or rule sets. Thus Neo-Wilsonians, such as Thomas P.M. Barnett, flirted with supporting Bush since he seemed to speak their language of Shrinking the Gap and Expanding the Core. Fiscal conservative such as Bruce Bartlett thought Bush spoke the language of small government. Many current and former military, such as Colin Powell, though that Bush understood duty, honor and military expenditures.
These groups now understand that they didn’t know Bush at all. They listened to his speeches with willing ears, but didn’t watch his actions. Sometimes this administration’s actions intersected with what people with other contexts value, but it is now clear that those intersections were mainly incidental. Thus Bush was the instrument of the Neo-Wilsonian’s Big Bang in the Middle East, but the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq demonstrates just how little Bush cared about democracy, freedom or connectivity. Bush did push through massive tax cuts, but his Imperial Unitary presidency is expansive and expensive. While GW loves to surround himself with soldiers and talk tough, he values tax cuts above body armor and his kiss-up, kick-down style of management does not fit in well with actual military values.
What are Bush’s actual contexts (rules sets)? Phillips identifies three: Oil, Finance and Radical Religion. If you understand these contexts, you can make sense of his actions and predict his future misdeeds. If you fail to understand the context Bush uses to make his decisions, you can be mislead into thinking that he is making decisions on the same basis you (or other rational actors) would.
Oil. It was clear from the start of this administration that it would be petroleum based. Their energy policy was a grab bag of anything and everything that would benefit U.S. based oil companies and their allies. Enron got deregulation and handpicked bureaucrats, even though that raised the price of energy for many. Drilling in ANWR became a recurrent theme, though it would do little to address the country’s energy problems. Our foreign policy has been dictated by the need to accommodate oil rich despots. Most importantly, the invasion of Iraq was undertaken to benefit oil companies. While it could have been occasioned by any number of other purposes, the run-up to war and its immediate aftermath make it hard to argue for anything but oil as the root cause.
Finance. The American economy is now debt based. We have even had negative personal savings rates (spending more than we make), managing that by going into debt. In this, it is important to understand just what matters to the leaders of this administration. They did not make their fortunes by growing food, by manufacturing things or in retail. In the main, they didn’t even make money through extracting natural resources. They used money, influence and political power to create more money through finance, manipulating the markets to create their wealth. Thus, we should not be surprised that U.S. manufacturing is disappearing, while Europe maintains theirs. That farmers are going under while agribusiness prospers. That control of the government is the key to wealth, political donations having a much better return than any other investment. The recent rewrite of the bankruptcy laws to benefit credit card companies shows how important the credit/debt sector has become.
Radical Religion. End-timers make up about 30% of American voters, but a much larger portion of the Republican base. Their novel ideas about Rapture, Left-Behind-ness and personal salvation are late-Nineteenth Century American inventions. Christianity existed for 1850 years before this nonsense was discovered in the Bible. Despite this, much of it has infected mainstream denominations and even the Catholic Church. On the other hand, Dominionism (the theory that Christians are called to rule politically) is far from new. The Catholic Church professed it for a millennium, finally abandoning it in the 1960s. The union of state and religion as harmful to both was a major discovery of the Founding Fathers, but Fundamentalism is the de-facto established religion in many parts of the South. Thus their anger when they can’t control prayers at public events, when their religion can’t be taught in schools, when science isn’t faith based.
Mainline Protestant denominations and Catholics have recognized this as a battle that is not worth fighting much less winning. They do not want others telling their children how to pray. They do not want a mere majority (or a vocal portion of the majority) to be able to impose their religious beliefs on minorities. They recognize that science does not have to be in accord with a literal reading of the Bible to accurately reflect God’s world. Evolution is taught with no problem at Catholic high schools and colleges, since it is the basis of much of modern science.
As a context, Fundamentalism is especially unhelpful. Other contexts/rule sets can be judged on the basis of how well they reflect reality. Thus, evolution either does or does not reflect what we know about life on Earth. The Core/Gap dialogue either models actual events and processes or it doesn’t. Contexts that do not match actual events are discarded. That is not the case with Fundamentalism. It is not evaluated by its adherents on the basis of how well it matches worldly events since it is a meta-context, beyond judgment on the basis of mere worldly events.
Viewing Bush’s actions through the lens of these three influences allows one to make sense of so many seemingly foolish and inconsistent actions. Global warming, evolution and virtually any scientific endeavor can be dismissed if it does not accord with the best interests of the Oil industry or the Fundamental mindset. PetroHawks are willing to employ the U.S. Military wherever oil can be found and “protected.” Israel is accorded special treatment not only as a democracy, but as the land where events leading to the Rapture must play out. The Federal budget balloons, but debt is what oils the machinery of finance. People, nations and religions are either good or evil, though exceptions can be made if they have oil. Critics are not only wrong, but a danger to proper order. Even the Constitution is just a piece of paper, waiting to be rewritten to suit the times. Press conferences are exercises in anti-language, speaking without trying to really communicate except to the chosen few who can decode the hidden hints.
In short, Phillips’ book is a treasure trove of insights into just how our country actually works.
Posted by neotradlibrarian 
Posted by neotradlibrarian 
Posted by neotradlibrarian 